Phawker

BY AMY Z. QUINN One might think that, living as I do way out in the part of South Jersey that puts the garden in the state, that I wouldn’t have to travel far for a good farm market fix, even at this time of year. And that’s true, to a point, but sometimes it’s worth it even for us country folk to venture into the city to shop for that which is fresh and fragrant. (No, I’m not talking about buying weed here, get your minds out of the gutter.) My personal favorite stop for a fruit-veggie-flower fix is either of Produce Junction’s two locations, on Easton Road in Glenside or Bryn Mawr Avenue in Wynnefield. The latter being the site of a drop-in last weekend by myself, with sisters Mafalde and Concetta (not their real names) in tow. I drove back to the Jerz with the backseat of my Toyota full and only about $30 lighter in the Coach.

Let’s see, I snagged: potted Easter flowers far enough away from blooming that they’ll actually make it to the holiday; ripe tomatoes on the vine, a clutch about the size of home plate for a couple of bucks; a bag of sliced white mushrooms that would probably cost at least a five-spot in a supermarket; red peppers begging to be roasted; a giant bag of clean, cut cilantro for two bucks and a handful of avocados at a both a price and state of ripeness that one wouldn’t feel bad about mashing up a few for a homemade facial mask. OK that’s not what I do, but like I said, you could. The sisters scored enough in the way of pantry staples, like potatoes and onions, that they can split the haul between their two small households for an even better bargain.

A note about Produce Junction: Tempting though it may be, resist the urge to subvert their strict “pay for everything in its place” policy. The five minutes it may save you are not worth the disapproving looks you’ll get from both the stroller-pushing yuppies and the well-dressed African-American ladies stopping in on their way home from church.

With this wealth, suffice to say, the eating was good at Mom’s house this week. All that avocado and cilantro left me for an immediate craving for an omelette I had years ago at French Roast in the West Village, when my friend Blondie lived in Brooklyn and it wasn’t yet a cliche to do so. . We’d save just enough money from whatever we we’d done on Saturday night to afford stopping there for brunch on Sunday morning, where we’d eat surrounded by guys who all could have been Evan Dando.

I’m not kidding when I say that every time we ate there, I ordered the same thing, a Tomato and Avocado Salsa Omelette. Their version was huge, usually too much to finish, and laced with shredded gruyere cheese. The only complaint I ever had was that cheese — the gruyere’s sharp edge was sometimes too much when paired with a strong cup of coffee.

In the interest of saving some time in the home cooking, skip the salsa-making unless you have some of the homemade kind left over from the party you had the night before. Cheese-wise, I’ve been using shredded sharp white cheddar, though queso blanco would work well if you want to get all authentic-like.

TOMATO-AVOCADO OMELETTE

2 eggs

1 tbs low-fat milk

1 tbs butter

1/2 ripe avocado, sliced

2 tsp chopped fresh cilantro

1 small tomato, seeded and chopped

3 tbs shredded cheese

Scramble the eggs w/the milk and some salt and pepper. Heat the butter in an 8″ nonstick pan until the bubbles subside. Shake the pan around to spread the butter, then add the eggs. DON’T TOUCH for 30 seconds. Using a silicone spatula, lift the edges to allow the egg to fill in underneath. When it’s about halfway set, layer the fillings on half, then fold over. Turn off the heat and cover for 1 minute to finish melting the cheese.

*Means ‘fun for the mouth.’

[Avocado Blues by Oliver Wetter]

Afterhours, Khyber Pass, Philadelphia, March 28th, 2007*

BY SIMONE SECCI FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT First thing to say, the Afterhours that I know and I saw playing live in Italy a couple of times, look very different from the band I saw tonight at the Khyber. For obvious reasons, because the crowd and the hype around them here are of very different proportions and also because their sound and live show was really different. Maybe cause of the influence of Twilight Singers leader’s Greg Dulli, maybe because of a new direction of the band, but tonight they rocked. Hard and loud and the people that besides few Italians never heard them before liked it, they really did. Of course they are not the newest sensation in the music scene and they never wanted to be, but they played their songs straight to the audience, even surprising the people with a couple of really funny performances, one of them, a chamber pop music song John Cale’s style, including just keyboards, sax and violin was really entertaining. That was enough for the people here to appreciate them and make them appear to me that i know the band since a pretty long time ago, really renewed, far from the standard of Italian songwriting meet grunge and wave, in which they have been categorized in Italy from the nineties, ever since.

*Afterhours is “Italy’s biggest rock band,” according to their publicist. Greg Dulli produced their new album. Simone is from Italy. English is his second language. He doesn’t always use it the ‘right’ way, but he always gets where he wants to go.

TLA to be renamed Fillmore.

BY SIMON WEICHSELBAUM OF THE DAILY NEWS NEW YORK CITY police were crowing this week over the latest murder statistics from the five boroughs. The sprawling metropolis clocked in at 84 homicides - as of Sunday - compared to 117 over the same period last year, a nearly 30 percent drop. Meanwhile, 90 miles south in Philadelphia, the statistics for the same period tell a far grimmer tale.As of last night 97 today 100 people had been murdered here, up 18 percent from this date last year - in a city that is just one-sixth the size of the Big Apple.

If the pace keeps up in New York, homicides there will be at their lowest number since 1963 - although the count jumped slightly last year over 2005.

While here, now nicknamed “Killadelphia” by many, the annual homicide count is once again set to hit another high.

DAILY NEWS: Philadelphia — Lead, Follow Or Get Of The Way I’ll Blow Your Fuckin Head Off!
ACTION NEWS: On the 90th day of the year, Philadelphia Police are investigating the city’s 100th murder. Police were called to the 4800 block of Aspen Street, around daybreak Saturday. Investigators tell Action News a patrol officer saw several males running from this area. When the officer went to see what was going on, he saw a man lying in in the street. He had been shot four times - all in the upper body. The officer called medics, but they could not save him.

*Note, our recurring GUNCRAZY column, wherein we try to keep a running tally on the daily carnage in the interest of shaming the powers that be into action, will hereafter be known as KILLADELPHIA. Tell your friends.

Tokyo Police Club + Cold War Kids, First Unitarian, Last Night [FLICKR]

BY AMY Z. QUINN You will not find a more potent, unadulterated rock moment than standing in a crowded church basement while a sweaty band of angst-y young manboys, most just a peach-fuzz mustache away from high school geekdom, makes you a little more deaf — and somehow you don’t mind. Such moments are the thermostat of the state of rock music — and judging by last night, somebody’s been paying the heating bill.
Openers Tokyo Police Club (pictured, above), a Canadian four-piece and blogrock buzz band, were just about perfect: Loud, pissed-off, clad in matching Adidas sneakers that looked to be not much larger than those worn by my kindergartner and spewing spastic, bass-driven ADHD rock. Sometimes hormones are a beauty to behold.

As for Cold War Kids, make no mistake: This is a proper rock n’ roll band. Versatile frontman Nathan Willett has a phenomenal rock voice, a gorgeous, scowling stage presence, and is a capable pianist and guitar player. In a few years they may even be a GREAT band. The California-based quintet were the darlings of last year’s South By Southwest Music Conference, and in the time since, the hype has done nothing but escalate: Their record was on the receiving end of a typically overwritten negative Pitchfork review; next week they’ll headline three sold-out shows at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City. Last night’s show was their first appearance in Philly since playing a free WXPN show back in December, and there was there was talk that $10 pairs of tickets were going for $150 on the Internets.

Willett, who is clearly working through some Daddy/God issues on Robbers & Cowards, strikes me as Brandon Flowers, minus the cheesey showboating, and blessed with a far, far better voice. There are moments when listening to their songs — rife with crushing letdowns, kids who act up and get slapped down, and, perhaps the font of all this misery, alcoholic parental dysfunction — that it feels a bit like peeking through the keyhole of a family therapy session. It will be interesting to see where his songwriting goes after he finishes working through it all. Grade: A

[Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA]

FROM ROLLING STONE After the screening, Borat returns to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel to shower and transform back into Sacha Baron Cohen: mild-mannered Londoner, fiance of actress Isla Fisher (Wedding Crashers), reluctant sometime resident of Los Angeles. I wait outside the restaurant Asiate for him to appear. I’d met Baron Cohen once before, three years ago, when he was recording his first series of Da Ali G Show for HBO, interviewing a panel of leading scientists as pseudo hip-hop youth talk-show host Ali G. (”Let’s talk about when technology goes horribly wrong: Could there be another Nintendo 64?”) At the time, our interview resulted in answers like this one: “When me came out me mum’s poom poom bush, me immediately started crying in a junglistic riddim. Me first word was ‘ho.’ “

FRESH AIR ON WHYY: Sacha Baron Cohen

She’s freewheelin’ here, completely improvising and re-arranging this gorgeous lullabye from Escondido into a loping Velvets vamp and, as such, it’s a hair overlong, but WOW! Breaks our motherfuckin’ heart, she does.

The Inquirer requested copies of five years of federal income tax returns from Philadelphia’s five major Democratic mayoral candidates. Here is a summary of their responses:

U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah yesterday declined, citing his wife’s privacy wishes. He previously cited her confidentiality agreement with NBC10, where she is an anchorwoman. The station has waived that agreement, but Renee Chenault-Fattah says she wants her salary kept private.

State Rep. Dwight Evans gave copies of three years of tax returns to The Inquirer yesterday. They show his legislative salary - $86,521 in 2005, reflecting his status as ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee - and a few hundred dollars in interest and dividends.

U.S. Rep. Bob Brady provided returns for six years. He and his wife, Debra, reported federal adjusted gross income of $246,428 in 2005.

Former Councilman Michael Nutter supplied returns for five years. He and his wife, Lisa, reported income of $176,742 in 2006.

Businessman Tom Knox disclosed three years of tax returns for himself and his wife, Linda. They reported income totaling $18.8 million from 2003 to 2005 from investments, including the sale of the Fidelity Mutual Insurance Group to UnitedHealthcare in 2004.

MORE

BY JEFF DEENEY “Today I saw…” is a series of nonfiction shorts based on my experiences as a caseworker serving formerly homeless families now living in North and West Philadelphia. I decided not long after starting the job that I was seeing so many fascinating and disturbing things in the city’s poorest neighborhoods that I needed to start cataloging them. I hope this bi-weekly column serves as a record of a side of the city that many Philadelphians don’t come in contact with on a daily basis. I want to capture moments not frequently covered by the local media, which tends to only cover the most fantastically violent or sordid aspects of life there.

Today I saw a tall, gaunt old hobo with wild eyes and pale skin mottled with patches of ruddy pink, running down the long corridor parallel to the Market East train tracks. It was a quick and skip-footed, stiff-legged hobble, like an aged junkie in helpless flight from a narc squad sting. He had greasy gray hair that stuck out from under a baseball cap, and wore a bright orange Flyers windbreaker. His whole body looked tense, clenched; his fists were balled tight and swinging back and forth, aiding his awkward forward momentum and causing his jacket’s nylon to make a husking sound, like flapped wings.
***
As he passed me he yelled, “Yo, man, I gotta go to the bathroom!” He dragged out the o’s, like the urgent siren of a speeding ambulance. I turned to look at the man walking next to me, a sport-coated young black man with a meticulous pencil mustache and leather brief case. He looked at me and we both laughed, turning back as we did to watch the still wailing hobo shrink into the distance.

***
Two minutes later the westbound El pulled into 11th Street, where I was waiting on the platform. When the doors opened, a young Latina in a snug black jacket with a fur-rimmed collar weaved in the doorway, obviously intoxicated. Each eye pointed in a different direction and her footing was uncertain as she fumbled forward with her hands splayed, as if reaching for a handrail to guide her. Her fingernails were long, fake and ornately painted. She stopped for a moment to ask me for the time and I told her I didn’t have it. She then stumbled into the off-loading foot traffic, knocking into passersby and calling out in a thickly slurred voice for someone to give her the time; she needed to know the time. I got on the train and turned around to continue watching. The doors shut in front of me and I saw her through the etched and scratched window grabbing onto a man’s arm. As the train jolted into motion I noticed that the the bleached-out crotch of her jeans was stained dark, soaking wet.

***
Today I saw a patrol car parked on 42nd Street, near the corner of Lancaster. Early in the morning there’s usually a group of old heads in track suits and Kangols standing around in front of the bodega shooting the shit. But today the block was empty, except for the two officers in the car — and the kid in the back. The officers were big black men, like former college footballers, and one of them was turned at the waist so he could look at the boy in the back. The kid had on a gray hooded sweatshirt, hood down. The officer was clearly shouting, his face contorted with anger and hard as stone as the kid, no older than 19, stared into his lap, looking gravely concerned.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jeff Deeney is a freelance writer who has contributed to the City Paper and the Inquirer. He focuses on issues of urban poverty and drug culture. He is also a caseworker with a nonprofit housing program that serves homeless families.

[Photo by Rachael Shirley]

INQUIRER: Early Thursday morning, a 37-year-old man died of a gunshot wound in the 4600 block of North Penn Street. He was the city’s 97th homicide victim this year. He was found inside a home at 1:19 a.m., and was pronounced dead there less than 20 minutes later, police said. His name was being withheld pending notification of family. No suspects or motives were known to police this morning.

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Truly, this is one of them.